Friday 28 March 2014

Town Layout

The second scene overlooks the town on which the eagle transformed dragon hovers. The castle was modeled by me but the town was modeled by John H. However, I had strip them down and make it twisted and old like the castle. Also,look a lot more papery.

 Then, I organised them around the space to look more like a town. Placed my beloved trees around. Even placed a few houses a little far to make it look like a receding town. Then as the dragon moves forward some trees were put on the barren landscape.


Production Schedule Updated

The Going Live Module, Reflection on Module Research paper, organising Focus Groups and transcribing the results took a lot of time that was otherwise scheduled for the development of the character models (Lily, dog and bird). I am currently still modeling Lily thus I had to reschedule the Production Schedule to mirror the changes and make up for the time lapsed.


Since the modeling is taking much time now. I have shifted the coloured tabs to reflect a more reasonable allocation of work left to time left. 

Monday 24 March 2014

Editing Dwarf Houses

John H. Had created the dwarf towns. However, I had to strip them down and remake some parts of it to make it look more papery. They were also very perfect like my previously modeled castle. So, I had tweak them here and there to make them look old and withered. Further, some houses were clustered and that took away the papery-ness of the scene, so I had to de-cluster them and make more befitting our vision.


John H. town

 Changed 

Friday 21 March 2014

Shot List


Since we had completed our 2D Animatic, to get along with the production of the film it was important that we make a Shot List and fill in the details regarding each shot. Lilly very efficiently made a template which I found to be very informative and apt for our animation film. As there are four of us working on this project, I included the ' Person Incharge' tab at the end of the template so that we would know who is responsible for which shot of the film. 

I used the 2D Animatic After-Effects file to fill in the rough time slots. After ascertaining the rough time calculating the frames was easy enough. Then I added a few lines to describe the shot. Details of the environment, characters, props and dynamics followed. I used the Notes slot to fill in any camera movements that might be used in the particular shot.

Following are the completed pages of the Shot List.






We are still at the Pre-Production stage thus the Production pipeline still remains to be filled in.

Thursday 20 March 2014

Editing Dwarf Castle

The castle looked new and shiny and we wanted something that looked a bit aged and a little destroyed. So,I stripped down bits and parts of it to make it look old,papery and fading.


I tweaked it in several places to make it look a little twisted and less perfect. I even remodeled the towers and the outer boundary to show paper thin walls.


Monday 17 March 2014

Modelling Lilly

                                                         
                                                                        Terrified Lily

The way Lily looks has changed tenfold since just the basic face. I have mostly been into modelling inanimate environmental objects. So,it was very important to maintain the topology required to animate a human model. I saw several videos on human modeling on Digital Tutors. It helped me maintain the topology but mostly I was following Sheng's character design.


I blocked all the body parts and then started modifying them according to the character.


I liked how the shoes turned out to be. 


Made the hand but the topology needs to be re-checked.



First look


The basic body blocked with little details.


Friday 14 March 2014

Paper Trees

It was essential for the towns to have trees. I thought it would look incomplete without them. My thought was how can any life exist without trees. So anytime we discussed town design I would always bring in the subject about trees.


The tree on far right was made on the concept art of Lilly(as shown below,tree on the far right).

Lilly's Concept Art

The tree in the middle was modeled as a simplified version of the right elaborate tree.
Further,the tree on the left was made on a doodle that Kieran had sketched as a reference.


These trees are arranged in all the scenes giving it a very papery feel throughout.

Friday 7 March 2014

Dwarf Castle

 We needed a dwarf castle near the dwarf town. So, I modeled this referencing here and there on how a castle might look. I found some interesting castle images online and some of the books on Tolkien art. I took in what might be best for our purpose.



I wished to do some landscaping as a castle should look grand and luxurious. However, as much detail I might have put it would have made the castle look less papery. Kieran was very focused and clear on what he wanted. So, he asked me to be careful and refrain from extra detailing.


Saturday 1 March 2014

Transcribing Focus Group and Results

Transcribing the Focus Group took a lot of time as I had conducted two focus groups and I had to transcribe audio worth one hour forty five minutes.

 Part of transcription from FG1


Part of transcription from FG2

Results
Both the Focus Groups had five participants. Focus Group1 had one pet owner and Focus Group2 had four pet owners. It was seen that despite the number of pet owners being higher in Focus Group2 they were less sympathetic to the cause of wildlife preservation than Focus Group1.

The order in which the two animatics were screened also affected the participant’s opinion. It seemed that the participants from Focus Group1 were more involved due to the Gain-Framed Film being shown first while Focus Group2 Participants seemed disinterested after the Loss-Framed screening. Focus Group1 participants appeared to have watched the Loss-Framed Film attentively as they had been drawn in by the narration of the Gain-Framed Film while Focus Group2 Participants were impatient at the Gain-Framed Film’s screening.

After the ‘preaching’ as one of the participant remarked, they seemed distant to the cause of the animals. In fact, they found the dog to be ‘stupid’. One of them said, “Why was the bird still hungry after eating all the biscuit....the biscuits were almost the same size as the birds? They were still in the mind frame of facts and statistics of the Loss-Framed Film and could not accept exaggerated animation. Also, Focus Group1 found the ending of the Gain-Framed Film to be ‘good’ and the one that ‘restores balance to the nature’ while Focus Group2 thought that it made the animatic ‘boring’ and ‘it was not required’.

Four participants (all from Focus Group1) thought that both the animatics carried different messages. They said that the Gain-Framed Film did not show the impact on humans while the Loss-Framed showed not only the impact on humans but portrayed them as the actual cause of the problem. While the rest of the participants thought that both the film carried the same message of ‘caring for animals’ and ‘saving nature’. Focus Group1 Participants also felt that the impact on human beings was under-represented.
Four out of ten participants said that they found the Loss-framed Film baffling as their focus kept shifting back and forth between the monologue and the graphics.


Participants from both of the Focus Groups seemed to agree unanimously that the Gain-Framed Animatic was entertaining and thus more memorable than the Loss-Framed Animatic. It can be also deduced that narration can help in forming an opinion over given matter as the participants could relate to the characters.